Richards, Frank (1876-1961), was the pen name of Charles Hamilton, the English children’s author of the “Billy Bunter” stories. Hamilton also wrote children’s stories under more than 20 other names, but the stories about Billy Bunter became the best known. Hamilton wrote more than 30 books about the adventures of Bunter, a boy who attends Greyfriars, a boarding school.
Most of Hamilton’s juvenile fiction has a school background. He created about 100 fictional schools as a setting for more than 6,000 stories. He published the stories in weekly magazines aimed at boy readers until the outbreak of World War II in 1939. After many juvenile magazines ceased publication during the war, Hamilton turned to writing books.
Charles Harold St. John Hamilton was born on Aug. 8, 1876, in Chiswick, London. He wrote an autobiography, The Autobiography of Frank Richards (1952). Hamilton died on Dec. 24, 1961.
